Weathermen help predict nation's health

Cold weather means more people are ill

Weather experts who normally help us to decide if we need to wrap up against the cold - are now helping the NHS predict the nation's health.

Cold weather means more heart attacks, more strokes and, when the ice forms, more people suffer damaging falls.

But using data from the Met Office, combined with projections of respiratory illness rates, health chiefs hope to predict winter peaks and run wards far more efficiently.

Weather is a helpful barometer of the nation's health with a variety of illnesses - from fractures to flu - far more common during the winter months.

Cash savings

Under the pilot scheme, weather experts provide forecasts for postcoded areas as regional weather patterns affect the demand on local hospitals.

The £1.4m project is being run in England by Dr William Bird, a GP, at the Met Office, and there may be plans to send the scheme national next winter.

Reading's Royal Berkshire Hospital has already saved £400,000 by using the projection that Christmas would be quiet, to cancel a decision to send 150 waiting list patients to the private sector.

Experts believe heart attacks rise three days after a cold spell, while strokes peak five days later as blood vessels contract.

Forecasts that the workload will be lower than normal could allow hospitals to book-in extra waiting list patients, while flu outbreaks, which tend to rise some 12 days after a cold spell, can be prepared for by clearing extra beds in advance.

Weather patterns affect demand on wards

The information could prove particularly useful to Accident and Emergency departments which, in some areas of the country, are labouring under serious staff shortages as they approach the winter peak - their busiest time of the year.

A spokeswoman at the Department of Health said the initiative started last year with five areas - Leeds, Wolverhampton, north London, Reading and Plymouth taking part. It has now been extended to 30 areas.

The Met Office has already provided commercial forecasting for the energy industry, supermarkets and the military.